1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a cooking apparatus and, more particularly, to an induction heating cooking apparatus having a plurality of heating coils.
2. Background of the Invention
An induction heating cooking apparatus is a device for cooking food by using heat generated by eddy current loss and hysteresis loss generated in a cooking vessel (or a cooking container) made of metal when an AC magnetic field is applied to the cooking vessel. The induction heating cooking apparatus has an advantage in that it has high efficiency. As illustrated in FIG. 1, an induction heating cooking apparatus 10 includes a heating coil 12 provided in a lower portion of an upper plate 11 on which a vessel 20 is placed, and as the heating coil is heated, a food item within the vessel is heated. The induction heating cooking apparatus further includes an inverter serving to apply a high frequency current to the heating coil 12.
In general, the inverter of the induction heating cooking apparatus may be implemented as one of a half-bridge type induction heating cooking apparatus, a full-bridge type induction heating cooking apparatus, a class E-type induction heating cooking apparatus, and the like. Also, in general, a single heating coil is connected to a single inverter.
Recently, products, such as a free cook zone type product, which detect a position of a vessel and heat the vessel no matter where the vessel is placed on an upper plate thereof have been introduced to the market of induction heating cooking apparatuses. In order to maximize heating efficiency, the amount of heating coils is advantageously required to be increased, and in this case, as the amount of heating coils is increased, the amount of inverters for driving them is also increased.